The present invention relates to cell support structures, particularly but riot exclusively to cell support structures for immobilizing cells.
The immobilization of biological cells by loading them onto a support structure is a technique often used by scientists in the production of important biologically derived products. The technique offers numerous advantages over free cell, liquid phase systems, including permitting increased ease of separation of the cells from the reaction medium, increased throughput flow rates in continuous reaction systems, increased cell density per unit volume of reaction medium, and the production of a relatively cell-free, product containing medium which in turn facilitates downstream processing.
Conventional immobilization materials suffer from several disadvantages. Some materials, such as synthetic polymers are relatively expensive and harmful, often causing a decrease in cell viability and/or product activity. Other materials used such as Agar, are mechanically soft, unstable and also cause cell viability problems. Calcium Alginate is currently one of the more popular materials used, but suffers from being relatively unstable and mechanically weak, and thereby prone to structural collapse during use, and is also susceptible to chemical attack.